Are you a good colleague or just a pain in the office?

There is at least one of them in every workplace, disrupting harmony and belittling colleagues.

They send insulting e-mails to rivals while simultaneously buttering up those in positions of power.

Whether an old-fashioned bully or a 'white- collar psychopath', they take all the fun out of an office.

There are countless uncomplimentary names for them, but with typical American forthrightness, Bob Sutton calls them a**holes.

And he has come up with a 24-point test to see if you are an office a**hole yourself.

Sutton, professor of management science at Stanford Engineering School, California, said: "We all have the potential to act like a**holes in the wrong conditions - when we are placed under pressure or, especially, when our workplace encourages everyone, especially the most power people, to act that way."

He believes that telling whether someone else is an office a**hole boils down to two simple questions.

"After talking to the alleged a**hole, does the 'target' feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energised or belittled by the person?

"In particular, does the 'target' feel worse about him or herself?

"Does the alleged a**hole aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those people who are more powerful?"

But there is hope for the targets of bullying. Professor Sutton said they should become 'emotionally detached' and not struggle against 'larger forces'.

Instead, they should pick battles they can win and take small steps to undermine their tormentor.

'Employees who face and witness constant bullying leave their jobs at higher rates than in civilised places,' he writes in his book The No A**hole Rule.

'But most of the afflicted hunker down and take it. They have no escape route to another job, or at least to one that pays as well.'

Bullying can cause other staff to resign, call in sick, and be less productive. They can even lead to other workers becoming office a**holes themselves.

Perhaps the best-known example of the phenomenon is David Brent, Ricky Gervais's character in TV's The Office.

'Some people bully to pass on the stress of their job to someone else. They will pick the most psychologically and emotionally vulnerable person in the organisation.

'Another character is the white-collar psychopath who takes great pleasure in affecting great psychological pain on others. Often they are charming and do terribly well because their anti-social behaviour is encouraged. They flatter their managers while making the lives of their team hell.'

Dr Drayton says this breeds an atmosphere of fear where people keep their heads down.

For those who feel powerless against the actions of office a**holes, some even steal to even the score.

Researchers at Ohio State University looked at three similar factories. Two introduced a ten-week 15 per cent pay cut after the firm temporarily lost a major contract.

In the first, factory employees were given a detailed and compassionate explanation, along with sincere apologies. In the second, the manager announced the cuts in a curt and impersonal manner.

In the factory where there was no pay cut theft rates held at around 4 per cent of product.

At the factory where pay cuts were sympathetically explained the rate of thefts went up to 6 per cent, while in the place where they were announced in a curt manner thefts went up to nearly 10 per cent.

Are you an a***hole? Now take this quiz to find out - indicate whether each statement is a true (T) or false (F) description of your interaction with colleagues

What are your gut reactions to people?

1. You feel surrounded by incompetent idiots - and you can't help letting them know the truth every now and then.

2. You were a nice person until you started working with the current bunch of creeps.

3. You don't trust the people around you, and they don't trust you.

4. You see your co-workers as competitors.

5. You believe that one of the best ways to climb the ladder is to push other people down or out of the way.

6. You secretly enjoy watching other people suffer and squirm.

7. You are often jealous of your colleagues and find it difficult to be genuinely pleased for them when they do well.

8. You have a small list of close friends and a long list of enemies, and you are equally proud of both lists.

How do you treat other people?

9. You sometimes just can not contain your contempt towards the losers and jerks at your workplace.

10. You find it useful to glare at, insult and even occasionally shout at some of the idiots at your workplace - otherwise they never seem to shape up.

11. You take credit for the accomplishments of your team - why not? They would be nowhere without you.

12. You enjoy lobbing "innocent" comments into meetings that serve no purpose other than to humiliate or cause discomfort to the person on the receiving end.

13. You are quick to point out others' mistakes.

14. You don't make mistakes. When something goes wrong, you always find some idiot to blame.

15. You constantly interrupt people because, after all, what you have to say is more important.

16. You are constantly buttering up your boss and other powerful people, and you expect the same treatment from your underlings.

17. Your jokes and teasing can get a bit nasty at times, but you have to admit that they are pretty funny.

18. You love your immediate team and they love you, but you are all continually at war with the rest of the organisation. You treat everyone else like rubbish because, after all, if you're not on my team you either don't matter or you're the enemy.

How do people react to you?

19. You notice that people seem to avoid eye contact when they talk to you - and they often become very nervous.

20. You have the feeling that people are always very careful about what they say around you.

21. People keep responding to your emails with hostile reactions.

22. People seem hesitant about divulging personal information to you.

23. People seem to stop having fun when you arrive.

24. People always seem to react to your arrival by announcing that they have to leave.

Scoring the test: add up the number of statements that you marked as true.

0-5: You aren't a certified a***hole

5-15: A borderline certified a***hole, perhaps the time has come to start changing your behaviour before it gets worse